Moe Pritchard, 53, makes his living patching rusted floor pans and reupholstering dinette cushions for vintage travel trailer owners within a 200-mile radius of his tiny eastern Ohio home. He’s avoided the town’s annual fall block party every year since his wife left him eight years prior, hates the nosy questions, forced small talk, the way neighbors pat his arm like he’s a lost dog who wandered into the wrong yard. He only showed up this time because his next door neighbor dropped off a free BBQ contest entry slip three days prior, said Moe’s brisket was too good to waste on just workbench lunches.
He’s leaned against the food tent leg, wiping grease off his frayed work jeans with a paper napkin, when a shoulder bumps hard enough to jostle the half-empty root beer in his hand. He’s ready to snap before he looks down, words dying in his throat. Lila Marlow, 42, his ex-wife’s younger cousin, grins up at him, holding a spiked apple cider sloshing over its plastic cup rim, a streak of charcoal smudged on her left cheek. He hasn’t seen her in 10 years, not since she showed up to his and his ex’s place with a broken down van and crashed on their couch for three weeks before driving to Alaska to shoot wildlife photos for an outdoor magazine.
She teases him first, says she barely recognized him, he’s got that salt-and-pepper stubble he never could grow back in his 40s, put on a little muscle hauling trailer frames around. He teases right back, nods at her scuffed steel-toe combat boots, says he’d know those beat up things anywhere, she was still wearing them when she spilled red wine all over his ex’s brand new white couch in 2013. She laughs so hard she snorts, and when she leans in to point out a kid chasing a golden retriever through a stack of hay bales, her forearm brushes his, warm through the thin cotton of her flannel shirt. The wind shifts, and he smells coconut shampoo and campfire smoke clinging to her hair, and for a second he forgets how to breathe.
He knows the small town rules. Messing around with your ex-wife’s cousin is the kind of gossip that gets spread over church potlucks and hardware store checkout lines for six months minimum. He’s spent years keeping his head down, avoiding any attention that isn’t related to his restoration work, and the last thing he needs is people whispering about him behind his back. But when she asks how long it’s been since he’s been on a date, he doesn’t lie, tells her eight years, give or take. She holds his gaze for two beats longer than she should, no pity in her eyes, just something warm, curious, that makes his neck feel hot under his shirt collar.
The emcee calls his name over the loudspeaker then, says he won first place in the brisket contest, a $200 hardware store gift card as the prize. He’s still holding the oversized plastic certificate when she grabs his wrist, her hand cold from holding her cider, and pulls him away from the crowd toward the empty hay bales at the edge of the party. She says she wants a bite of the winning brisket, and when he rips off a piece and hands it to her, a smudge of BBQ sauce smears on his thumb. She leans in before he can wipe it off, licks the sauce off slow, deliberate, then freezes for half a second like she didn’t mean to do it. He doesn’t pull his hand away.
She says she’s only in town for three more nights, crashing in that tiny one-room Airbnb cabin on the edge of the state forest, brought back a bottle of 12-year bourbon from a Kentucky trip last month. She scribbles the address on a crumpled food tent napkin, tucks it into the breast pocket of his work flannel, her knuckles brushing his chest when she pulls her hand back. She tells him he can bring the rest of the brisket if he wants, no pressure, no expectations, just don’t show up later than 8 if he’s coming.
She waves then, turns and walks toward her family cluster by the fire pit, her boots kicking up crumbs of burnt orange maple leaves as she goes. He stands there for a minute, twisting the hardware store gift card between his fingers, the napkin crinkling in his pocket, and doesn’t even notice when the kid with the golden retriever runs past and slams into his leg. He pulls his phone out of his pocket, shoots a text to the guy who was supposed to drop off a 1965 Airstream frame tomorrow, tells him he’s gonna have to reschedule to the day after.
